Madison Square Garden's James Dolan Is Spending Big on New York's Governor Race James Dolan has put surveillance at the center of his sports and entertainment empire. Now he's getting involved in GOP politics by backing a candidate who supports Flock, ICE, and AI data centers. Bruce Blakeman, the Republican nominee for New York governor, promised last November to erect a wall of spy gear, license plate readers, and biometric surveillance between the city and the suburbs. He has since received millions of dollars in donations from the family and businesses of James Dolan, the owner of Madison Square Garden, where a network of cameras capture the faces of (nearly) every patron who walks in the arena and corporate security forces hunt for critics of the boss. Dolan's support of Blakeman, the executive of suburban Nassau County, could be seen as something of a counterintuitive move in a state long run by Democrats, and in a year when political surveys are picking up indications of a blue wave.

In an exclusive interview with WIRED, Paragon Solutions CEO Andrew Boyd reveals the limits of the company's promise to keep bad actors from abusing its powerful espionage tool. Spyware maker Paragon Solutions has long positioned itself as the good guy in an industry seemingly filled with bad ones, vowing to never sell its mobile spyware to authoritarian regimes or ones with poor human rights records. It also promises to cut off any customer caught misusing its products against journalists, dissidents, or other non-legitimate targets. Yet weeks after Paragon, then Israeli-owned, was acquired by the US equity firm AE Industrial Partners in December 2024 and merged with REDLattice--an American offensive cyber firm owned by AE that this week announced plans to go public --WhatsApp alleged that Paragon's Graphite spyware was used to infect the phones of more than 60 individuals in more than 20 countries, including journalists and activists. Most of the targets were not identified, but the University of Toronto's Citizen Lab named two journalists and two activists in Italy. Italian authorities denied misuse . Paragon and its new US owners, despite their zero-tolerance policy for customer abuse of their software, initially declined to comment on the allegations, and reportedly was exploring potential legal action against WhatsApp after the company sent a cease-and-desist letter to Paragon.

OpenAI's Dots and Meta's Muse are vying to be your AI agent of choice. I've tried both--and I suspect you will too. Yesterday, I spent the morning at OpenAI's annual DevDay, where over 2,500 nerds discussed building software and marveled at the latest artificial intelligence models. The biggest reveal of the day was Dots, the company's new, always-on agents that proactively help complete tasks and make autonomous decisions as they scour the web. After watching the sometimes messy demos on stage and hearing CEO Sam Altman talk about his experiences using the agents, I was curious what it felt like to boss my own Dot around.

Mashable's Best: E-readers, robovacs, laptops, earbuds, smart home and more Mashable Selects In My Bag Look Up Creator Playbook Say More AI at School Safety Net Versus Trending Now Back to School Good Connection: Uplifting stories for a digital age All Series Trump's AI-powered America.gov is here. It was built by DOGE alumni and runs on Grok. On day one, it backed the 2020 election results. Chance Townsend is the General Assignments Editor at Mashable, covering tech, video games, dating apps, digital culture, and whatever else comes his way. He has a Master's in Journalism from the University of North Texas and is a proud orange cat father.

Consumer advocate Lindsay Owen's new book,, traces how corporations use software--from ever-changing prices to opaque algorithms--to squeeze every penny from you. I always feel like I'm overpaying whenever I buy something these days. I never seem to have access to the best coupons, and apps with algorithmically adjusted prices don't exactly the cost of what's in my cart. It feels like prices are constantly creeping up and my budget is being stretched thin. These core frustrations were what drew me to .

The company said its latest Astra model would undergo more work to meet safety standards, and issued an apology for the way it handled the hacking of an Australian government website. OpenAI has cancelled plans to release its latest GPT-6.1 Astra system next month after the model failed to meet safety standards. Research and safety leaders decided not to ship the model after finding it was worse at sticking to human users' values and goals than previous systems, OpenAI told WIRED. "It didn't quite meet the bar in terms of staying within scope and authorization, and how it communicates back to the user about the type of work it's done," head of safety systems Saachi Jain said. The company said it has other new models coming soon which do meet its safety standards and plans to release other Astra models in future. The agent accessed non-public data, ran commands, and wrote files onto the server.

Google's Gemini Can Now Make Calls for You on Pixel Phones Call for Me--a feature that's exclusive to the Pixel 11 series--gives robocalls a new meaning. Google has been trying to have its AI assistant make phone calls on your behalf for almost 10 years. It enabled the now-defunct Google Assistant to call restaurants and book tables . That service was shuttered a few years ago, but now comes round two, powered by modern large language models . On Thursday, Google announced Call for Me, an experimental beta feature exclusive to its latest Pixel 11 smartphones in the US (and in English).

Once seen as nerdy but harmless innovators, men in tech are now widely regarded as red-pilled Elon Musk wannabes. It's made getting laid a whole lot harder. Engaged in a flirtatious conversation at a bar in Manhattan, 23-year-old Gary stood with a Guinness in hand as he explained to a woman why he took an engineering job at Palantir, the data analytics company cofounded by Alex Karp and Peter Thiel. Raking in a $250,000 salary would allow him to help pay off his parents' mounting medical bills, he explained. Gary wasn't met with sympathy. Medical debt, the woman told him, was "not an excuse to work somewhere like ."

The Pope's AI Guy Is Worried About'Cartel' Behavior Among Big Labs Paolo Benanti tells WIRED that hysteria over whether godlike AI could destroy humanity is distracting from the need for public debate about how to govern the technology. Recently, warnings from researchers inside the world's largest artificial intelligence labs about the rapid pace of development have led to panic about the possibility that the technology could extinguish humanity . Those warnings are predicated on the idea that--propelled by ferocious competition and a rivalry between the US and China--labs are barreling toward superintelligent models whose abilities will far surpass those of humans. But according to Father Paolo Benanti, a priest who advises the Catholic Church on AI, the handwaving over superintelligence distracts from the need for open debate about how to constrain the companies building the technology. By casting the problem as so complex that only they can solve it, he says, the big labs exclude everyone else from the conversation.

Apple may pay out up to $95 for each eligible iPhone purchased by someone who felt misled about Siri's release. You have until December 21 to submit a claim. In May, Apple agreed to pay out $250 million as part of a class action lawsuit over claims the company overhyped its Apple Intelligence tools, specifically the long-delayed Siri AI overhaul. Although the revamped Siri AI voice assistant is now available for owners of newer iPhones via iOS 27, you may still be eligible to claim cash back for past purchases. This settlement covers customers in the US who made their purchases from June 10, 2024 to March 29, 2025, and bought certain iPhone 15 or iPhone 16 models from Apple .